Thoughts on books, reading and publishing from the staff and friends of the Tattered Cover Book Store.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Erin's Recommending:

Welcome to Hokey Pokey. A place and a time,
when childhood is at its best: games to play, bikes to ride,
experiences to be had. There are no adults in Hokey Pokey, just kids,
and the laws governing Hokey Pokey are simple and finite. But when one
of the biggest kids, Jack, has his beloved bike stolen—and by a girl, no
less—his entire world, and the world of Hokey Pokey, turns to chaos.
Without his bike, Jack feels like everything has started to go wrong. He
feels different, not like himself, and he knows something is about to
change. And even more troubling he alone hears a faint train whistle.
But that's impossible: every kid knows there no trains in Hokey Pokey,
only tracks.

Master storyteller Jerry Spinelli has written a dizzingly inventive
fable of growing up and letting go, of leaving childhood and its
imagination play behind for the more dazzling adventures of adolescence,
and of learning to accept not only the sunny part of day, but the
unwelcome arrival of night, as well.

Perfect for fans of Thirteen Reasons Why and Looking for Alaska, The Tragedy Paper has been called “a beguiling and beautifully written tale of first love and heartbreak,” by #1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner.

It follows the story of Tim Macbeth, a seventeen-year-old albino and a
recent transfer to the prestigious Irving School, where the motto is
“Enter here to be and find a friend.” A friend is the last thing Tim
expects or wants—he just hopes to get through his senior year unnoticed.
Yet, despite his efforts to blend into the background, he finds himself
falling for the quintessential “It” girl, Vanessa Sheller, girlfriend
of Irving’s most popular boy. To Tim's surprise, Vanessa is into him,
too, but she can kiss her social status goodbye if anyone ever finds
out. Tim and Vanessa begin a clandestine romance, but looming over them
is the Tragedy Paper, Irving’s version of a senior year thesis, assigned
by the school’s least forgiving teacher.

Jumping between viewpoints of the love-struck Tim and Duncan, a current senior about to uncover the truth of Tim and Vanessa, The Tragedy Paper is a compelling tale of forbidden love and the lengths people will go to keep their secrets.

Book Three of the Maze Runner Series

Thomas knows that Wicked can’t be trusted, but they say the time for
lies is over, that they’ve collected all they can from the Trials and
now must rely on the Gladers, with full memories restored, to help them
with their ultimate mission. To complete the blueprint for the cure to
the Flare.

What Wicked doesn’t know is that something’s happened
that no Trial or Variable could have foreseen. Thomas has remembered far
more than they think. And he knows that he can’t believe a word of what
Wicked says.

The time for lies is over. But the truth is more dangerous than Thomas could ever imagine.

In the town of Placid, Wisconsin, in 1871,
Georgie Burkhardt is known for two things: her uncanny aim with a rifle
and her habit of speaking her mind plainly.

But when Georgie blurts out something she shouldn't, her older sister
Agatha flees, running off with a pack of "pigeoners" trailing the
passenger pigeon migration. And when the sheriff returns to town with an
unidentifiable body—wearing Agatha's blue-green ball gown—everyone
assumes the worst. Except Georgie. Refusing to believe the facts that
are laid down (and coffined) before her, Georgie sets out on a journey
to find her sister. She will track every last clue and shred of evidence
to bring Agatha home. Yet even with resolute determination and her
trusty Springfield single-shot, Georgie is not prepared for what she
faces on the western frontier.

At the end of World War II, Jack Baker, a landlocked Kansas boy, is
suddenly uprooted after his mother's death and placed in a boy's
boarding school in Maine. There, Jack encounters Early Auden, the
strangest of boys, who reads the number pi as a story and collects
clippings about the sightings of a great black bear in the nearby
mountains. Newcomer Jack feels lost yet can't help being drawn to Early,
who won't believe what everyone accepts to be the truth about the Great
Appalachian Bear, Timber Rattlesnakes, and the legendary school hero
known as The Fish, who never returned from the war. When the boys find
themselves unexpectedly alone at school, they embark on a quest on the
Appalachian Trail in search of the great black bear. But what they are
searching for is sometimes different from what they find. They will meet
truly strange characters, each of whom figures into the pi story Early
weaves as they travel, while discovering things they never realized
about themselves and others in their lives.